honestly

it is just starting to dawn on me, that motherhood is not all that there is, not all that there will be, to my life, that although it will always be there, and never ever ever go away, it will not take up center stage forever, that other things will come, things that will be just as important, possibly more so, things that will take up my time, my energy, my dreams, things that i will define myself by, that i don't even know now, or maybe some of them i do, things that will displace/replace my children at the very core, but without ever quite doing so, i am starting to glimpse this other life, the life of mothers who are mothers but whose children are no longer children, i am starting to sense that this is the reality of motherhood, there is this time, this time that i am slowly, so slowly you would hardly notice, starting to leave behind, when i am a mother and you are a child, and i am your mother, and you are my child, and so from your need and my becoming we are locked into each other like pieces of a puzzle that fit so tight, so perfect that nothing could ever come in between, but then there comes a time, this gawky time i am beginning to slip into, when i am a mother, but you are no longer a child, and i am your mother, and you are still my child, and to dance this new dance, the dance of the empty shell, what does it mean to be a mother, when my children are no longer children. 

this new shape i have taken on, because it was the perfect piece of puzzle, to accommoddatte, you, but then you grow and shape-shift on me, and what happens, then, to me?

honestly

it is a breathing problem. primarily. if i knew how to breathe, i would know how to live. take the accordion for instance, beautiful instrument, i was told i was not musical way back when, but it was the guitar they wanted me to play then, and pinching is not my thing, plus it's too far from the heart, location-wise, but the accordion now, rings in, rings through, my chest, the music slipping right into me, and i knew this the very first time i held one, and was hooked. even though i was old (what kind of person begins playing an instrument at 35???), and even though between little children and work i didn't have much time for music, i played anyway, took lessons for a couple of years, until life as i knew it collapsed, and divorce and mayhem followed, and then another pregnancy, another infant at the breast, blah blah, so here we are, i just started again, and i love it, as much as ever, maybe the things we love we will never stop loving, for me it's the accordion, and the children, and the man, but i digress, so here i am, playing again after years of silence, and i run into it straight away, it was there all along, and I knew it, but it didn't bother me, and now it's all i hear.

there are phrases in music. breaths. you breathe in, one phrase. you breathe out, one phrase. it's just a big manual lung, you let it fill with air, you push the air out, how ironic that i would choose myself a breathing instrument. and this is what i love, and what i hate, about it. because the thing is: i cannot breathe. and therefore I cannot play the accordion. i just let it fill fill fill fill with air, until my arms are stretched so wide I cannot reach the buttons, and no idea where we are with the melody, and then i have no choice but to push push push it all in until it collapses on its own silence, often in the middle of a note. and this is exactly what i do with my breath too.... just this. no sense of where it's at, always at odds with the song being sung, by the body or the world outside. Too little air, too much, stretching too far out, running out of breath on the way in.

or look at my writing, right here, where is the breath, when is a person supposed to breathe. i mean seriously, have you even looked at these paragraphs. how would i write if i breathed. if i stopped. for that is the key, the very holy grail, finally revealed to me this week by my patient teacher. I said: I cannot do it, I cannot go back, I cannot initiate the movement back. I SIMPLY CANNOT DO THIS. She said: you have to stop first. She said: there is a pause, between in-breath and out-breath, between out-breath and in-breath. that pause is where the movement ends, and the new movement begins.

here.

in the pause.

where one thing ends.

and another begins.

honestly

i am mad, at everyone i know, for all those times when they are right about every bloody little thing, especially the things I don't want them to be right about, and for the tiny meeny few times when they are so incredibly insanely wrong, and for leaving it up to me to figure out which is which, and for refusing to do this living thing for me, but instead just sitting on the sideline commenting on the various levels of disaster I bring upon myself, and I am so mad at people, for never never never letting me a bad mother, an unloving mother, a frustrated mother, a hateful mother to my kids, not even in my dreams, not even in the dark, not even when the lights are off and the world is sleeping, and the night is gentle, and the moon knows it all, and i'm mad at everyone i know, for walking out on me when i needed them most, for being all over me when i needed space, and for never ever letting me keep the illusion that they can, that they will, that they should carry me, always pushing that shit right in my face just when i need that air castle most, no, baby you are on your own, we can't do this for you, you gotta do it yourself, and i am mad at them for making it look like their life is so much better than mine, or worse making it look as if my life is so much better than theirs, and for judging me all the time, and for not judging me at all, making me feel like a judgmental bitch from hell for judging them (ALL THE TIME), and for not always knowing what i need before i do, hell I am mad at them for not being a compilation of god and my mother and my therapist (but clearly better, much better versions of all of those, because the originals have clearly failed me at times and if my radar is anything to go by, they will fail, most certainly, fail me again, and i'm mad at all those blogs/magazines/books i've been reading for years, with their pretty covers that promise promise if only i order and pay and read and follow all their amazingly simple (BUT FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE TO FOLLOW) advice, then i will magically (there is the wand, it's included, stuck to the back-cover where the empty plastic CD holder should be, tacked on with a bit of my daughter's old chewing-gum) turn into this amazingly better version of myself, and for years, years, years I believed them, and tried so hard, and failed failed failed every single FUCKING time, until I realised, just very very recently (an ant's fart away in fact) that it's all crap, that these standards are IMPOSSIBLE to meet, that nobody meets them, except accidentally for a few minutes (and yes, that has happened to me at times, and it will probably, if my radar can be trusted, it will happen again, maybe tomorrow...), and the rest of the time, it's just down in the trenches, covered in mud, and getting by, and trying not to yell (too much) and not to hit (too hard), and being sorry, sorry, sorry, and crying bitter tears over your kids' sleeping cheeks, and oh man, I am mad at all mothers, for not saying how hard this would be, for not saying how hard it is ('my kids are the best thing that ever happened to me' DUH, AS WELL AS THE WORST!!!!! 'if it weren't for them, I don't know whether I would have made it' AND if it weren't for them she wouldn't have been up shit creek in the first place....), for not saying how they hate hate hate at times, and that this is ok, because there is no other way, no other way to be a mother, not in this world there isn't, and i am mad at anybody who would pretend otherwise, i am mad at all people, my people, because i been hurting myself with this shit for years, and how come nobody nobody ever ever ever told me. to stop.

honestly

i should have gone to bed a long time ago. i had promised myself forty days of early sleep-in, to compensate for these nights so short, and cut up, chop chop chop into so many little pieces, and because no good comes out of being down here late at night, it's all computer screens and nail-biting, and anxiety, and guilt, and confusion, and fear-mongering, and feeling distinctly like a failure, and the opposite of inspiration (whatever that is, expiration i guess), all tired-but-wired, and the man coming home, and staying up later still, supposedly to chat, but really to make uninteresting noises at each other until we are both so exhausted we cannot unpeel ourselves from the couch, and so have no choice but to stay even longer, and watch some sitcom online, which then stalls every couple of seconds, but we don't give up, we are heroes that way, because it will restart any moment now, heroes AND creatures of faith, and it would be so nice just to see the next minute, of this show that neither of us cares the least about, because the only story lines i can handle at night are neither funny, nor sad, nor scary, nor real, nor in any way emotionally engaging or intellectually challenging, and the show does restart eventually, because of or despite our many well-honed and only mildly insane rituals (open full screen, close full screen, pause, restart, do not move, whatever you do, do not move, hit the laptop) (oh our faith rewarded at last!), just as I am about to 'give up', although not quite sure what giving up means in this context, the entire evening being nothing more than a long series of bite size giving up motions, and we watch whatever it is for a whole other minute, before it stalls all over again, and by now i am so tired i don't even think i will make it to bed, especially since there is the six-year old, to be lifted out (after dark he gets heavier by the hour, I swear), and carried to the toilet, where he may pee in the bowl if I am lucky, or on his feet, or on mine, or on his new pajama pants, requiring a trip to the closet, and then carried back to bed, to be placed not too close to the edge, to avoid his falling out in a couple of hours just as the toddler rolls away after his 3 am boob session, but not too close to the middle either, or i will not be able to squeeze in between him and his brother, and will have to lie all night on my side, balancing precariously on one elbow, and wake up with a neck so stiff I will not be able to nod or shake my head all day, and of course the cat has taken advantage of the toilet routine to sneak into the bedroom and squeeze herself flat under the bed (quite a feat i tell you: that bed barely lifts itself off the floor), from where she can never ever be extracted again, which you'd think solves the problem, one way or another, except she is not allowed in the bedroom at night, another little something to feel guilty about, poor little baby, forced to wander alone through the house like the long-lost ghost of kitties past, but seriously, there is only so many feet/hands/fingers/noses i can handle in my face/belly/underpants on any given night, plus she purs like a locomotive every time the toddler wakes up (eight to ten times a night), which then starts him on his deep-sleep monologue about the one time the cat scratched him on the cheek (i don't even know whether that ever happened, it may be urban legend), and from then move on to some other monologue (involving trucks, very very large ones, and swings, and a long list of all the people he knows and loves and who may or may not be sleeping in this house right now, and should he get up and check) (well, one of them ain't sleeping for sure at this point). anyway, just thinking of all this makes me so tired i just stay put, and watch another stalling episode (how to stretch 20 minutes of insanely inane tv into a couple of hours), and oh my, while i was writing this, somehow a whole 40 minutes passed, and i can hear the man on the stairs, and honestly, i should just go to bed now...

honestly

my life is all wrong. I don't mean a little wrong, in a way that can be fixed with a diet, a change in schedule, a bit of enlightened reading, some embroidery by the fireplace, a good book, a sweet cuddle involving small sticky hands, or a visit to my shrink. Not the kind that will pass, as all wrongs do eventually, washed away in time's great laundry machine like another chocolate or blood stain on the great white sheet of existence, as in the oh-so-longed-for 'this too shall pass'. Not the kind that can be lived with, because no life is perfect, and so of course neither is mine, so let's list the little unavoidable imperfections that can so easily be taken on board, and that secretly not so secretly do nothing but emphasise the otherwise perfect goodness of what I have. Not the kind that can be flaunted, like a bad girl's habit, James Dean-style smoking , or a Marilyn Monroey interest in my next-door neighbour. No, the whole thing is wrong, massively big-time wrong in unrepairably permanently damaged never-to-be-recovered or forgiven or forgotten or accommodated ways. Everything about my life is wrong. It is not the life I imagined, not the life I planned, not the one I worked so hard to achieve. Every aspect of it is just bloody wrong. And I am killing myself pretending that all this wrongness will just go away, if I don't look at it, or if I stare at it until it (or I) go blind, or if I work work work to make it right again, or if I accept it, as in lie down and just tell myself 'my life is all wrong, it will never be right again, I've lost the rhythm, forgotten the steps, the teacher left, so did the other students, and a hole got burnt in the instruction book, plus it's getting chilly and dark anyway, and I better go home, but this was it, my one and only chance to find out how to dance this, so I guess I'll never know, and I'll never dance, and that's how wrong it is', if I lie down and keep repeating this, then maybe maybe it will turn right again. But then I do all that, I do it all day long, in between the work and the children and the friends and the man and the cat and the house and the tired irked irate body and facebook and blogs and laundry, and I do it all night, in between the toddler and the six-year old and the cat and the man and the moon, and it doesn't help, it's not getting itself sorted out, it's not getting smoother, or lighter, or more bearable, or less wrong, no matter how I tweak and pull and push and shove, and swear and cry and lie prostrate.

And when I say my life is wrong, I mean everything about it is wrong, I mean every single moment of every single day is wrong, it is wrong for instance that I sit here now writing this when I could/should/might have done something to fix this sorry mess, radically change my livelihood, stop my children from growing up and leaving me, discover a large bag of gold coins that would guarantee I never again have to do what i have to do every day, so that the bread is baked, and the butter purchased, and the school fees covered, and the bodies clothed, and the car maintenanced. And if I wasn't writing this now, if I was in fact cuddling the cat (who clearly deserves a more committed, more involved, more loving, more present, more enlightened kind of owner), or doing the laundry, or finishing the translation that is always always due, or cooking the spaghetti sauce for tomorrow, or clearing out the dishwasher, or phoning the children, or texting the man, or preparing some sweet surprise for their home return, or doing my administration, or playing the accordion, or sorting through  photographs, or getting the groceries, or having a nap, or washing my hair without using shampoo, or getting a less blood-stained rag to catch more menstrual blood, well then that would be all wrong too, because it would not be any of them other 'or's, and it would not be writing.

Because with this much wrongness around, the least, the very least I could do is get this one thing right, at least, don't you think, I could at least, raving, mad, deluded exhausted, lain flat, destroyed and abandoned by all rightness, at least I could write about it, be eloquent and funny, and true and honest and raw and take the mess, and the unshed tears and the frustration and the delusion and the castles in the sky, and the tiny on-the-floor details, and make it into something that amuses and moves, rips open and titillates, something artistic, inspiring, preferably both, since I am a writer, albeit a wrong, failed one, one that doesn't, if at all possible, write. at all. ever.

Except I am writing now, yes, let's just say, just for now, yes, let's just say that this is, in fact, writing.